(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Knowing CPR and when to use it saves countless
lives, and new research shows eliminating the mouth-to-mouth could double
survival rates.

In a new study reported by the University of Arizona, a person's chance of
surviving a cardiac arrest outside a hospital was found to be twice as high
when bystanders performed CPR with continuous chest compressions than when
they performed standard CPR with mouth-to-mouth breathing.

Researchers found while 5 percent of cardiac arrest victims survived without
CPR, 6 percent of those who received standard CPR survived. If bystanders
performed chest compressions without mouth-to-mouth breathing, the survival
rate jumped to 11 percent.

In victims whose collapse was witnessed and whose heart was in a rhythm most
likely to respond to a defibrillator shock, survival with standard CPR was
19 percent, while survival with continuous chest compressions was 32
percent.

"This study is the first to show that bystanders can raise the odds of
survival by giving continuous chest compressions rather than the type of CPR
they are being taught in most certification processes," Gordon A. Ewy, M.D.,
director of the University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center, was quoted as
saying. "If we can get more people to act, more patients who were on the
brink of death will be walking out of the hospital neurologically intact."

The study included 4,850 out-of-hospital cardiac arrest cases in Arizona
that occurred between 2005 and 2009. Results show of those who performed
CPR, 77 percent chose chest compressions without mouth-to-mouth.

Source: Presented at the American Heart Association's Resuscitation
Symposium in Orlando, Fla., November 15, 2009